Johnson: His birthday gift was giving

Jimmy Parker was turning 50 last week. To help him celebrate it, friends and family began arriving at his Huntington Beach home at 3 in the morning.

It goes back to last January when his wife, Patricia, realizing the milestone day was approaching, gently asked him if he, perhaps, wanted a big party. Maybe Jimmy, she feared, would feel the same way she had when she turned 40, and wanted only to slink out of town and forget the march of time.

"What I'd really like to do is go down to Tijuana and build a Corazon house. At least I'd have something to show for it."

Pat smiled. "I'll send out the emails," she quickly told him.

By 4:15 on the morning of April 27, Jimmy's birthday, more than 30 people had gathered at the Parker's home to make the caravan ride to Chula Vista, from where they would be escorted across the border into Tijuana.

Soon they would be led to the site where the foundation already had been poured, and the stacks of lumber and other material had been laid out for them.

At a little before 8 a.m., Jimmy, a general contractor by trade, put everyone to work. He has been a volunteer on some 25 Corazon home builds for close to 15 years now. This would be his first from start to finish.

"It just seemed like a good idea to introduce my friends to the organization, to let them see first-hand what is really going on down there," he said.

Corazon is a Santa Ana-based nonprofit that began in 1972 when Jennie Castillion left the safety and security of her middle-class Orange County life to visit with and minister to the closest and poorest people she could find. She found them in Tijuana.

Joined there by two similarly minded men, Mike Echolds and Mark Vanni, she focused on the immediate needs of those she met, such as providing food and blankets.

In 1979, they did their first "one-day house-build," a one-room plywood house on a raised wooden floor. By the late 1990s, Corazon had perfected its 360-square-foot two-room, with a second-floor loft design that can still be built in a day. So far, It has built about 1,500 homes in the Tijuana area.

Jimmy and Pat raised $7,800 to build their house for a couple with two small children, said Jennifer Allen, Corazon executive director.

The waiting list for a home is long, she said, adding that the couple who received last week's house had to wait four years, and put in some 7,000 hours of volunteer work with Corazon to finally become eligible.

"That one house, by Tijuana standards, will change generations of lives there forever," Allen said. It comes, she said, with a strong door that locks and can keep them and their possessions safe. There isn't any longer a leaky roof. There is a place for the children to do their homework, she said.

Pat, an attorney, took care of all the logistics for the build. She emailed church friends, moms from her 15-year-old daughter's soccer team, longtime friends and anyone else she could remember.

"If they couldn't come join us, they donated money," Pat said. "It is an amazing thing to ask friends and family to sacrifice a day to do all of this physical labor and, by the way, to pay for that privilege by donating, too.

"We had already agreed that whatever we raised, if it wasn't enough, we would guarantee the rest. We didn't need to worry. I will tell you, I was just so moved that so many people responded."

A total of 35 people showed, including her 22-year-old son, who flew in from graduate school in Santa Cruz to participate. They were all professional people, each with deadlines and worries back home. They got on those ladders in Tijuana, she said, and found the work completely relaxing.

"It was almost therapeutic," she said.

The husband and wife who will move into the home worked right alongside Jimmy and Pat. The woman, who spent much of the day carrying her 1-year-old baby, still laid floors and hauled wood, Pat said.

"Just seeing the difference you make in the lives of that couple with your own eyes makes it all worthwhile," she said. "What we left them with is so much better than what they had. And there is still a lot that could be done for that family and a gazillion others like them to make their lives better."

When 4:30 p.m. arrived and they were finished with the house, Jimmy handed the couple, weeping madly, the keys to the front door.

"The most touching thing," Pat recalled, "was after Jimmy handed them the keys, my sister had forgotten something and opened the front door. All she could hear was their son, squealing with delight as he ran up the stairs to the loft."

Nearly all of the 35 then piled back into their cars and made the drive to Rosarito Beach where Pat had arranged a party for Jimmy at the Los Arcos Restaurant where there was a cake, decorations and a 13-member mariachi band waiting. They danced the night away.